Perception

I suppose all of us know the phrase “Perception is reality,” and, clearly, there is a reason the phrase exists.

Perception is what stereotypes are made of. It is also at the core of all kinds of discrimination. ARE women weaker? People from Poland less bright? African-Americans naturally athletic? Or do these perceptions come from cultural biases and opportunities and losses?

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, has an amazing section that describes excellence in all sorts of endeavors as AT LEAST having the opportunity to have 10,000 hours of practice at that endeavor. It could be hockey or piano or basketball or poetry. To get good, you have to have the chance to work at it.

Last week, for the first time in many, many years, an incident of violence happened on State Street at the core of the emerging new downtown of Schenectady. Like so many acts of violence, it was between people who knew each other and quickly escalated disagreement to the basest form of resolution: a gun.

You know, we practice this kind of thing quite a bit in America. We practice it through war, through television entertainment, and through the absence of the practice of other forms of conflict resolution. This was not the downtown of Schenectady. This was everywhere in America: Columbine to Colonie.

One cannot help but sympathize for the victim. I cannot help but sympathize for us all, as, really, we are all the victims.

Does it hurt when the Times Union headline reads, “Shooting wounds city’s Renaissance?” Yes, certainly it does. What really hurts, though, is that the headline is irrelevant. People were wounded. People ARE wounded. The City of Schenectady’s renaissance is because many people care. They will not go away, nor will the renaissance they aspire to.

But the human wounds will continue. Possibly retribution. Probably copy cats. Certainly the more we practice this kind of human interaction, the less we are practicing more life sustaining ones.

2 Responses

You can’t simply say that a Renaissance is wounded and make it true through declaration.

People will do what people will do. They will shoot each other. AND they will sweat a very different sort of blood to make where they live is the place that they want it to be. You can shoot at people, but you can’t shoot an idea. That’s why ideas work.

As long as people are committed to an idea collectively, the only wounds that can occur are physical. That being said, it is incredibly regrettable and painful, as it always is, when someone is needlessly injured by violence.

All the laws in the world won’t stop one man with a gun – sure. But neither will bullets damage the heart of a community, if it is committed to bettering itself. And I think downtown Schenectady has proven that.